Speaker 1: I can't help but look at this as a dramatic
Speaker 1: human failure. In the long term, I think we have
Speaker 1: to basically say how much we've failed and figure out
Speaker 1: how we're going to do better next time. And I
Speaker 1: think doing better next time we could say, let's start
Speaker 1: trusting each other and caring about each other. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a real test of how much do we
Speaker 1: care about sacrificing of ourselves, not going out, not seeing
Speaker 1: our friends, and so on for the good of other people.
Speaker 1: Has pushed so many of us to the brink that
Speaker 1: collectively it feels like this year cannot end soon enough.
Speaker 1: I report on politics, I report on business, I report
Speaker 1: on breaking news and culture, and over the last ten
Speaker 1: months it has been an extraordinary time for this country.
Speaker 1: One of the big issues, though, when the clock strikes
Speaker 1: midnight and hits our problems aren't over. We are in
Speaker 1: a national crisis. Look at how we've responded to COVID.
Speaker 1: In many ways we have absolutely failed. So here we are,
Speaker 1: with the new year ahead of us. I want to
Speaker 1: ask the question, what can we do to be better, smarter,
Speaker 1: behave better as individuals, as communities, as governments, as businesses.
Speaker 1: On this episode, of Modern Rules. We're looking at what
Speaker 1: motivates people in a crisis and what our response to
Speaker 1: COVID can teach us about our own human behavior. I'm
Speaker 1: Stephanie Rule, MSNBC Anchor, NBC News Senior correspondent, and this
Speaker 1: is Modern Rules, a podcast from NBC Think and I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Right now, We're in a situation where our
Speaker 1: behavior impacts our friends, our neighbors, are coworkers, health, their lives,
Speaker 1: their livelihoods. So how are we behaving? To dive into
Speaker 1: this topic, I'm joined by one of my absolute favorites,
Speaker 1: Dan Arielli, an expert on human behavior here. He's a
Speaker 1: professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, So basically,
Speaker 1: Dan is an expert on why we do the things
Speaker 1: we do. Daniel, you have been on my mind for
Speaker 1: the last few weeks because you study human behavior and
Speaker 1: how we respond to COVID, whether we actually isolate, whether
Speaker 1: we contact race, whether we wear a mask that impacts,
Speaker 1: whether this thing spreads. So when you look at the pandemic,
Speaker 1: what stands out the most to you about the way
Speaker 1: we've reacted as a society. I look at it and
Speaker 1: I think we have failed and we felt in so
Speaker 1: many ways. I mean, there many many reasons for the failure,
Speaker 1: and it's not just in the US. But if you
Speaker 1: think about the essence of pandemic, pandemic is what's called
Speaker 1: the social good problem. The problem is that we do
Speaker 1: things that are not just for ourselves in the show term,
Speaker 1: they're good for society in the long term. And comedies
Speaker 1: like that. So if you're in your early entees, your
Speaker 1: chance of dying from COVID is very low. But now
Speaker 1: we tell you, please stay at home, please keep social distancing,
Speaker 1: Please don't go out, not because of you, but because
Speaker 1: it's really bad for other people. Now you have to
Speaker 1: decide to care about other people. And what happened if
Speaker 1: we see some other people who are doing that, So
Speaker 1: we say, are we the only suckers? Like we are
Speaker 1: going to behave well and keep a social distance and
Speaker 1: wash our hands and not go out and do all
Speaker 1: of those things when other people are. We feel that
Speaker 1: we're paying a price, um and nobody else is doing it,
Speaker 1: so then then we don't do it as well. So
Speaker 1: one one big element of this thing is the lack
Speaker 1: of social cohesion. One big element of this is the
Speaker 1: lack of trust and then, of course, the other is
Speaker 1: that it became political and it became a question of
Speaker 1: ideology of yes, mass no masks. People were told do
Speaker 1: not travel over and over and yet airlines saw their
Speaker 1: highest numbers in a year. We might see the same
Speaker 1: thing come Christmas. Why is it so hard for people
Speaker 1: to follow orders? So let's talk about Corona is a
Speaker 1: low probability event, and let's let's think about something else,
Speaker 1: like texting and driving. So imagine that you think the
Speaker 1: probability of texting and driving and something that happens about
Speaker 1: one So it's a lot of probability event, and one
Speaker 1: day you text and drive and nothing happened because the
Speaker 1: probability is very low. What is your experience of that.
Speaker 1: We get description of what's the frighting and not frightening
Speaker 1: from the news from the media, But our experience with
Speaker 1: texting and driving is that it's not that dangerous because
Speaker 1: every time we do it, nothing that happened until it happened,
Speaker 1: and of course it's too late. The same thing is
Speaker 1: true with COVID. But the experience of low probability event
Speaker 1: is is an experience that rewards bad behaved of You
Speaker 1: imagine that in the beginning you're very afraid, and you
Speaker 1: wear a mask, and you wash your hands ten times
Speaker 1: a day, and you keep social distance, and one day
Speaker 1: you forget your mask and nothing happened. Because it's a
Speaker 1: lot of probability, even we say, hey, it's not as dangerous.
Speaker 1: So what happened they experience during CONFID is nothing happened,
Speaker 1: Nothing happened, nothing happened. It must be not as dangerous,
Speaker 1: or maybe I had it before, or maybe it's not
Speaker 1: as risky, or maybe I don't trust the news. Most
Speaker 1: of the time, when we don't do what we're told,
Speaker 1: we get the wrong lesson. So the experience if it
Speaker 1: was easier to catch COVID, if every time you didn't
Speaker 1: wear a mask, wash your hands, and kept social distance,
Speaker 1: you would get COVID. People would learn very quickly. How
Speaker 1: much to the people around us influence our behavior? Right,
Speaker 1: it seems like some towns and cities almost a h
Speaker 1: mask compliant, and other cities you've got rallies against it.
Speaker 1: People aren't wearing them. There's anger. How much do one's
Speaker 1: community influence how they respond to COVID? From a social perspective,
Speaker 1: we observe more the people who misbehaved in the people
Speaker 1: who behave Think about driving, and let's say you drive
Speaker 1: down some highway and five cars drive extra fast and
Speaker 1: pass you. Do you pay attention to all the cars
Speaker 1: of the speed limit? Not as much. You pay more
Speaker 1: attention to the cards who are breaking the law. And
Speaker 1: the same thing happens with COVID. We are more sensitive
Speaker 1: to the people who are breaking the rule. We pay
Speaker 1: more attention to them, we see them, they become more
Speaker 1: sell And then finally, of course, when some of our
Speaker 1: political leaders or even some celebrities, people in high positions
Speaker 1: of visibility don't adhere year, we we see those as
Speaker 1: very vivid examples. We are dramatically influenced by the people
Speaker 1: around us, and we mostly noticed the people who are
Speaker 1: miss misbehaving. But the second thing you mentioned before unfair.
Speaker 1: And you know, if if I and contributed to the
Speaker 1: public good, and I'm saying, look, I'm sacrificing myself, I'm
Speaker 1: staying at home and so on, but they see other
Speaker 1: people not doing it, why should I do that. One
Speaker 1: of the other things to consider is the loneliness and
Speaker 1: the economic impact. Well, it's those two things that have
Speaker 1: caused so many people not to comply with the rules.
Speaker 1: So are we looking at loneliness or economic impact in
Speaker 1: the wrong way. Imagine somebody who's closing their store or
Speaker 1: only doing delivery on something and they see the person
Speaker 1: next to them opening the restaurant, let's say, serving people inside.
Speaker 1: The other guy said, why am I sacrificing? Why am
Speaker 1: I sacrid finding myself when like these people would get
Speaker 1: sick in my neighbors restaurant. So we also we also
Speaker 1: need the sense that this is something that everybody is doing,
Speaker 1: and when some people are doing it and some people
Speaker 1: are not, the force is also very strong to stop adhering.
Speaker 1: And because we pay more attention to the people who misbehave,
Speaker 1: they become a bigger, bigger issue because they're polluting the
Speaker 1: pool already. And that's a rational reason, right because you say, look,
Speaker 1: I am dropping the bucket. It only makes sense to
Speaker 1: come together as a community if everybody is doing it.
Speaker 1: So so what other people are doing in a pandemic
Speaker 1: is extra important because if we see other people misbehaving,
Speaker 1: we feel like suckers. But has it been a complete
Speaker 1: failure on the part of society, because many, many people
Speaker 1: have dramatically changed their behavior, especially in the early months
Speaker 1: of COVID, for the most part we shut down. So
Speaker 1: on some level, isn't that a massive success that we
Speaker 1: saw in the American people? So I think we we
Speaker 1: started talking about safe behavior in the wrong way. We
Speaker 1: talked about it as saving yourself rather than about hurting
Speaker 1: other people. Right from the beginning, the message should have
Speaker 1: been a public good message, not a personal message, because
Speaker 1: the moment it's personal, it's up to you. You say,
Speaker 1: let's let me decide what's my cost and benefit. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't about that. It was really about the public good,
Speaker 1: and it was about other people catching it. It was
Speaker 1: about the hospital systems being overwhelmed, and and we didn't
Speaker 1: emphasize those enough. So first of all, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the big lessons in social science and behavior economics
Speaker 1: is that the environment matters. And here I have to say,
Speaker 1: I'm very proud that my university a duke, because we
Speaker 1: did lots of things from the beginning to change the environment. So,
Speaker 1: for example, we created a new social contract and we
Speaker 1: said this is not a regular life. We are a community,
Speaker 1: and we are responsible for everybody, and the students are
Speaker 1: responsible for the faculty, and the faculty are responsible for
Speaker 1: the students. And we've done very well, so the number
Speaker 1: of COVID cases was very low. I think we've been
Speaker 1: one of the leaders. But we invested. We I mean
Speaker 1: the university invested a lot of effort saying we're a community,
Speaker 1: we care about each other. So you made it about
Speaker 1: love not punishment. We we made it about love. In fact,
Speaker 1: we had students walking around and if they saw people
Speaker 1: adhering to the rules, they said, thank you, here's a
Speaker 1: vouchue for coffee. We we rewarded good behaviors, and some
Speaker 1: of the professors told me that these students install them,
Speaker 1: please be more careful. There was there was really fantastic caring,
Speaker 1: very very proud of both the thought into all of this.
Speaker 1: Right we were as a university. You know, we know
Speaker 1: something about social science, and it's nice that that we
Speaker 1: used what we know to create a community. I actually
Speaker 1: think in some instances there's been an extraordinary return of community.
Speaker 1: I mean myself when I got sick, you know, an
Speaker 1: outpouring of neighbors who I didn't even know very well.
Speaker 1: We're dropping those casserole dishes at my door from my kids.
Speaker 1: You know, my parents always knew their neighbors, they were
Speaker 1: their friends for years and years. But as time passed
Speaker 1: and we all find our own friends in our phones,
Speaker 1: we stopped talking to our neighbors. Suddenly our neighbors have
Speaker 1: become our lifelines. How about how this has impacted family.
Speaker 1: We are inherently a social animal. And if you think
Speaker 1: about being so lonely for such a long time, what
Speaker 1: are the long term applications of this? I don't know
Speaker 1: what the answer is, but I think that if if
Speaker 1: we had a chance, when you know, the closure have started,
Speaker 1: I think we should have given families advice of what
Speaker 1: you do. All of a sudden, we were thrown into
Speaker 1: a very different environment, and what works and doesn't work
Speaker 1: in this environment is very very different than what we
Speaker 1: needed to do was to help people. I wish we
Speaker 1: had the panel of experts on romantic relationship, a panel
Speaker 1: of experts on education, a panel of experts on this,
Speaker 1: and we would have given people instructions because because it
Speaker 1: is a lot of time to to manage. We'll be
Speaker 1: back after the break. I want to talk about this
Speaker 1: idea of freedom because we've heard so much about it
Speaker 1: through this pandemic, this idea of freedom. Back in the spring,
Speaker 1: we saw those protesters in Michigan holding Liberate signs. Why
Speaker 1: is this idea of freedom so powerful to so many,
Speaker 1: especially in the face of these COVID restrictions. Yes, so
Speaker 1: there's a there's a personality trade called reactants where we
Speaker 1: just don't like somebody to restrict our freedom. And you know, frankly,
Speaker 1: I don't like it either, right and freedom all else
Speaker 1: being equal is great. I'm not I'm not against it,
Speaker 1: but it is interesting what are the limits of freedom?
Speaker 1: And it's kind of a bizarre to to realize how
Speaker 1: domain specific it is. So for example, and nobody is
Speaker 1: saying I want freedom to drive in red lights and
Speaker 1: park on sidewalks. Why why is it that we're willing
Speaker 1: to accept severe restrictions of our freedom when it comes
Speaker 1: to driving. And the reason it's obvious, it's because we
Speaker 1: see the terrible consequences on other people. Like we understand
Speaker 1: that if we have the right to drive in red light,
Speaker 1: it means people would die. And we kind of think
Speaker 1: that it's okay for people to make mistakes and kill themselves,
Speaker 1: but killing other people is not okay. And the moment
Speaker 1: we understand that people have what's called negative externalities to
Speaker 1: our actions, then we say, I'm not willing to accept freedom.
Speaker 1: Here you can't hurt other people. But in general, people
Speaker 1: value freedom as long as it doesn't hurt other people.
Speaker 1: And what's so bizarre about Corona is that it is
Speaker 1: about other people. Then what do we do for the
Speaker 1: next hurdle before the next pandemic? You mentioned it, the vaccine.
Speaker 1: What kind of language, what kind of efforts are needed
Speaker 1: to actually motivate people to get the vaccine when it's available,
Speaker 1: knowing that there's a lot of fake news out there.
Speaker 1: So the first thing I think we need to do
Speaker 1: is we need to create a wait list for the vaccine.
Speaker 1: You know, Basically we talked about social We talked about
Speaker 1: the fact that we want people to see what other
Speaker 1: people are doing. If we the national weightlist that you
Speaker 1: could sign up for and you would see how many
Speaker 1: millions of people want it, that would create a social
Speaker 1: understanding of how desirable it is. The second thing is
Speaker 1: that we need to schedule an appointment for everybody. You know,
Speaker 1: if you kind of on defense and slightly negative and
Speaker 1: you have a meeting for you know, April seventeen to
Speaker 1: go and get vaccinated, and you have to say no,
Speaker 1: I don't want it, I want to cancel, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a very different action. And then you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of the people who are the most extreme negative,
Speaker 1: you know, this is not going to work by telling
Speaker 1: them they're stupid, and it's not going to work by
Speaker 1: giving them more information. I think that the vaccine deniers
Speaker 1: this is an issue. This like single issue voters. People
Speaker 1: who who are single issue voters, they basically say this
Speaker 1: issue is so important, it's like the only thing that matters,
Speaker 1: and that become part of their identity. And people who
Speaker 1: are against vaccine, it's about lack of trust and it's
Speaker 1: about fear. And I don't know what the answer is,
Speaker 1: but I know that for sure it's not about giving
Speaker 1: them more information, and for sure it's about giving them
Speaker 1: and a ladder to climb down from where they don't
Speaker 1: need to betray their core identity belief. So I don't
Speaker 1: have the solution yet, but we need to recognize that
Speaker 1: the obstacle is not lack of information. But when we
Speaker 1: come together and like and and you know the reality
Speaker 1: is that we're so happy the vaccination is coming, but
Speaker 1: we could have made the damage so much longer. I'm
Speaker 1: an optimist in nature, but I look at it and
Speaker 1: I say, I want us to fix things for the
Speaker 1: next pandemic. I want us to to to to learn
Speaker 1: the lesson and say, okay, we have to trust somebody.
Speaker 1: We have two so higher caring for each other. We
Speaker 1: have to understand publicly. I want us to have a
Speaker 1: kit for the next pandemic it's going to come, that
Speaker 1: will be more ready for it. How do you keep wealthy, connected,
Speaker 1: privileged people from not cheating, from not jumping ahead of
Speaker 1: the line to get this vaccine. When fairness breaks, then
Speaker 1: people say, let's break it in more ways. And I
Speaker 1: think what we need to do is we need to
Speaker 1: have a very clear hierarchy of what goes first, second
Speaker 1: and third, say okay, healthcare workers, people over sixty five,
Speaker 1: we all have to kind of agree to that. And
Speaker 1: it needs to be transparent so we don't think that
Speaker 1: people are bypassing the queue. In fact, I think we
Speaker 1: should make January one memorial day to COVID, you know,
Speaker 1: because it COVID is over. But I think we have
Speaker 1: to acknowledge how we have failed as as humanity in
Speaker 1: this thing. You know, it's it's wonderful that's a vaccination,
Speaker 1: but the reality is that washing hands, wearing masks, keeping
Speaker 1: social distance, we had that solution for a while, right.
Speaker 1: I think that first of all, um, we need to
Speaker 1: get to a new understanding of what COVID is all about.
Speaker 1: You know, there are people who believe it more and
Speaker 1: less and so on, and I think if we made
Speaker 1: a COVID Memorial Day or regret they, I think we
Speaker 1: would come to religion that it's real, it's real, it's central,
Speaker 1: it's big, it deserves its own day. So that's one reason, right,
Speaker 1: we we galvanize and we agree to it. The second
Speaker 1: reason is that there's lots of consequences of these things
Speaker 1: that we haven't recognized yet, and we need to think
Speaker 1: about the way to to think about all of those.
Speaker 1: And then the last thing is I think we have
Speaker 1: to basically say sorry if if I hope that the
Speaker 1: next pandemic will deal with better. We need to basically
Speaker 1: become more articulate about where we have failed. And each
Speaker 1: of us has done some undesirable things during this time. Right,
Speaker 1: nobody is is perfectly innocent. We all need to realize
Speaker 1: that we didn't do as much as possible for our community.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think if we gave it some time
Speaker 1: and thought about it, we would come with a conclusion
Speaker 1: that where we have gone wrong, and we can create
Speaker 1: an action plan for what we would do better next time.
Speaker 1: I do hope one day we have an official COVID
Speaker 1: Memorial Day. It has been almost a year since we
Speaker 1: first heard reports of this mysterious virus in Wuhan, China,
Speaker 1: and in the last year, COVID has dominated our lives
Speaker 1: and our minds for months and fatigue, I get it.
Speaker 1: Fatigue is set in for a lot of us. On
Speaker 1: Modern Rules, we like to get straight to the point
Speaker 1: so you have some time to think. But after this episode,
Speaker 1: I really want to challenge you to think about how
Speaker 1: you're behaving and how it impacts other people. Dan reminded
Speaker 1: me that we still have a lot to think about
Speaker 1: the loss, the failure, the future, and how we as
Speaker 1: individuals and communities could do things different next time. Think
Speaker 1: about it. I'm Stephanie Rule and you're listening to Modern Rules,
Speaker 1: a podcast from NBC Think, MSNBC and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This podcast is hosted by me Stephanie Rule. Mike Biett
Speaker 1: and Katrina Norvell are executive producers. Meredith Bennett Smith is
Speaker 1: Senior editor for NBC Think and our editorial lead. The
Speaker 1: podcast is engineered and edited by Josh Fisher. Additional production
Speaker 1: support provided by Charles Herman, Rachel Rosenbaum and Lauren Wynn,
Speaker 1: and special thanks to Katherine kim Are, Global head of
Speaker 1: Digital News right here at NBC News and MSNBC. For
Speaker 1: more thought provoking analysis, visit NBC news dot com slash
Speaker 1: thing